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Honey Bees in Decline

By now most people have heard of the “unprecedented losses” of the honey bee; some tabloids have even gone so far as to warn of its

impending “extinction.” Are these losses unprecedented? Are these stories even true? It’s pretty hard to make a claim of unprec-edented losses, if one hasn’t really delved into the historical background of the art, science and business of keeping bees. Sad to say, a lot of people seem to have the idea that studying history is boring, irrelevant, or just plain old-fashioned. I wonder how many people know that digital electronic codes were used in the 1800s. Samuel Morse patented the Morse Code in 1837, forty years before the Bell telephone was, in 1876. And what was the telegraph used for? Texting.

The further back you look, the more you realize that the history of beekeeping is a tale of falling and getting back up. The thing that characterizes it is the incredible resil-ience of not only the bees, but the beekeep-ers and the beekeeping industry. I started beekeeping in 1974, so I have lived through quite a bit of history by now. For example, in the 1970s there were devastating losses due to new and sophisticated pesticides (like Penncap). Brood disease was epidemic in Southern California, where I lived. This was due in part to the many new and inex-perienced beekeepers, but also because bee inspection program lost funding and was reduced to next to nothing.

In the 1980s I expanded to nearly 500 colonies, but was beset by one challenge after another. The housing boom drove me off most of my best locations into the backcountry with everybody else, where yields were dependent on rainfall and gen-erally far less than on the coast, which was perpetually in bloom. The price of honey fell further and further, down to about 35 cents a pound. It was obvious that the next catastrophes would be mites and African bees; I gave up in 1990. Many people quit beekeeping in the nineties, as varroa mites took out millions of colonies. I rejoined the fight in 1999, when I went to work at the Dyce Bee Lab at Cornell University. Our

primary focus was on preventing the annual collapse of colonies due to the build-up of varroa mites.

There have been reports in the news and magazines ranging from Time to Scientific American. They all talk of mysterious mala-dies, loss in food production and a “world without bees.” The alarmist tone of the arti-cles masks the fact that most of these stories are filled with errors, misunderstandings and nonsense. Compared to the beginning of the twentieth century, colony numbers in the US are about the same. There was a huge surge in numbers during World War II for a variety of reasons including demand for beeswax for the war effort. After the war ended, the market for honey and wax plummeted and dire predictions began. The beekeeping industry rallied and got the gov-ernment to begin the long saga of subsidies, support payments and indemnification.

The following excerpt is from an Ameri-can Bee Journal article published in 1949:

That the bee population of the United States has been on the decline for several years is common knowl-edge to beekeepers. The public how-ever, has not been made aware of how important this decline is and how di-sastrous it may become if it continues for any great number of years. Nor have the implications of the continued lack of bees on the economy of every living person been brought into sharp focus. (Potter)

This was at a time when the colony count was slipping from the wartime high of al-most six million. Much later, in the 1970s, the same basic story was appearing in news-papers. Dr. John Harbo, of the USDA bee research lab in Baton Rouge, was quoted as saying that honey bees were in decline and that it could affect the world’s food supply. This was at the point when the numbers had fallen to 4 million, about what they had been before the war. But what had been the effect of going from 6 million to 4? This isn’t men-tioned, as there had not been a significant ef-fect, other than to boost the price of honey. In fact, Harbo goes on to say: “This isn’t something sudden. It’s been happening for years. We’re not going to run out of bees. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

The world picture, on the other hand, tells an entirely different story. FAO statistics show the number of managed bee hives in the world rising from 50 million in 1960 to more than 80 million today. But this figure only reflects managed colonies, not wild colonies. It is hard to know the real number of “unkept” honey bee colonies in the world, but I have spent a lot of effort finding the best estimates. I believe there are at least 310 million in Africa, and another 200 million colonies of African bees in South America. It seems clear that there are at least half a billion honey bee colonies in the world, not even counting the other species such as the Asian honey bee, Apis cerana, which is widespread throughout Eastern Asia.

Seasonal LossesSo, what about the unprecedented sea-

sonal losses that we hear about? The Bee Pete in 1975 in beeyard

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Informed Partnership says that annual losses have repeatedly been around 35% since they started polling beekeepers. At the same time we are told that historically, beekeep-ers rarely lost more than 10 to 15 percent. Is this really true? To truly understand, we have to take a hard look at management, and how it has changed over the years. In the early twentieth century, bee experts such as E. F. Phillips emphasized the im-portance of having strong healthy colonies. They recommended replacing unproductive queens and employing effective swarm con-trol measures. And at the end of the season, beekeepers were told to ruthlessly eliminate subpar colonies to prevent winter loss. This last is a very important point which is lost in many discussions of winter loss. If a bee-keeper reduces his colony count drastically in the fall, the actual winter loss can be sig-nificantly reduced. But the overall loss may actually be the same. If you cut 15% in fall and then lose 15% over winter, your actual loss is 30%.

I am going to digress briefly to introduce G. H. Cale. He was an editor of the Ameri-can Bee Journal for many decades and had a long career which included many aspects of commercial beekeeping and research. Gladstone Hume Cale was born in 1890 in Rochester, NY. He had been employed by the Maryland College of Agriculture, and was on the staff with Dr. E. F. Phillips at the U. S. Department of Agriculture. He joined the company of Dadant & Sons in 1921, where he was put in charge of all work in the Dadant apiaries, about 800 colonies. He was added to the American Bee Jour-nal as their Experimental Apiarist. G. H. Cale wrote a popular monthly page called “All Around the Bee Yard.” As his respon-sibilities multiplied, the column became intermittent and the magazine was deluged with requests to bring it back. In 1947, Cale wrote “because of the insistence from read-ers that ‘All Around the Bee Yard’ must be returned to its place in the sun, here we go again.” As you read the following, you will

see right away that he speaks with a sense of authority, backed by a half century of per-sonal experience.

A good colony of bees, well pro-tected, packed if desirable, and with a top entrance, with an abundance of stores, will usually come through win-ter in good shape, even in the North. The condition of the colony is prob-ably more important than any other factor.

This last observation, perhaps cham-pioned more consistently by Dr. Farrar in Wisconsin than by anyone else, that the condition of the colony is of the most importance as far as wintering is concerned, is gradually leading to the practice of only wintering colonies in proper condition; that is, with an abun-dance of young bees, plenty of stores, plenty of pollen reserves and reason-able protection. All other colonies are removed before the winter period begins. This will decrease the winter loss, but it will increase the number of hives that are empty. From our own ex-perience we find thirty-five out of one hundred hives are empty each spring from all causes and must be replaced one way or another.

The following month, he had some seri-ous explaining to do:

Ouch! Wow! Did I stir up a hor-net’s nest with diverse stings over my remark last month that from our own experience we find thirty-five out of one hundred hives are empty each spring from all causes which must be replaced one way or another! Most think like George Rea in his article in this issue, “Keeping Colonies Strong” that this is the result of neglect, or poor management, or shiftless methods. That is not the case. I think, in our own experience, we have learned more than the average beekeeper has learned that only the best colonies pay.

Therefore, from the very beginning of the season, when all hives are full of bees, we keep taking out any poor ones which arise from any causes rather than to fool with them, or try to get them back into shape. So we con-centrate our energies on those that are able to produce a crop. After all, pet-ting and pampering, and the endeavor to get indifferent colonies into honey producing condition is not worth what it costs.

Losses, however, may be made up by using these very colonies that are not good for honey to divide out into nuclei which, with new queens, can grow back into full colonies and of themselves, partly, if not wholly, re-place their own loss.

So we admit frankly that, in our own practice, we do not fool with queenless colonies, drone-laying colonies, poor

Peter Borst with load of bees in 1988.

“All Around the Bee Yard” column written by G. H. Cale

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honey producing colonies, with queens no longer tenable, and we do not try to winter any colony which is not in the very best possible shape for winter. Now, is this good practice or bad prac-tice? (Cale)

In short, the savvy beekeeper simply relied on the two-thirds of his colonies that are performing well, and replaced the other third as time permits. 35% loss was considered typical. The solution is to have 150% of the colonies you need to make it pay, knowing a third of these may be either colonies in decline, or newly made colonies building up.

George H. Rea was extension specialist in apiculture at Cornell until 1942; he was mentioned in G. H. Cale’s discussion. In his response to Cale’s comments, he echoed Dr. Phillips:

After telling how to avoid heavy loss he says, “From our own experi-ence we find thirty-five out of one hun-dred hives are empty each Spring from all causes and must be replaced one way or another.” What a confession of the sins in modern beekeeping! What an indictment of beekeeping prac-tices! No other business could stand so heavy annual loss and survive. Can-not we beekeepers do a better job than that? (Rea)

Loss Due to DiseaseBut there is another major source of loss,

often in the peak of summer. It’s perfectly clear that keeping bees in apiaries and es-pecially large apiaries, brings about the in-crease and transmission of disease. In the early part of the twentieth century almost nothing was known about bacteria and other microorganisms; viruses were not yet discovered. One by one various pathogens were identified, and yet bees still seemed to periodically disappear without cause.

During recent winters beekeepers in some parts of California have been puzzled by what appears to be a rather rapid disappearance of bees from their hives. Strong colonies heavy with honey and pollen, apparently at their prime for overwintering, suddenly start to decline for no apparent reason during autumn, and collapse within six weeks. The disorder is now officially known as “Autumn Collapse” but has also been called “disappearing disease” because no sick or dead bees could be found in failing colonies. The disorder has caused loss of up to 90 per cent of the colonies in affected apiaries. Simi-lar losses have occurred in parts of Louisiana, Texas, Alabama and New Mexico. The disorder was first noticed during the winter of 1961-62.

Attempts to bring about recovery in affected colonies by feeding antibiot-ics, syrup, and/or adding bees failed. A number of other remedies were tried.

The most promising was the feeding of thin sugar syrup containing a small amount of pollen to simulate a good nectar flow. (Foote)

These unexplained disappearances appear again and again. Twenty years later, “Disap-pearing Disease” was back. There was a se-ries of articles in the American Bee Journal which attempted to clarify the mysterious malady:

Disappearing disease of honey bees has been observed by beekeepers in at least 27 states and in every geo-graphical region of the United States. Inspectors describe occasions when adult worker bees disappeared during periods of cool, damp weather or when an adult population failed to build up for no identifiable reason. One large

scale queen breeder and several com-mercial beekeepers indicated that they had experienced DD and that in some cases large numbers of colonies were affected.

Why are pesticides so often listed as the primary cause of dwindling/disappearing-bee problem? In the past, people have been inclined to “think” pesticides, often without thoroughly in-vestigating all aspects of the bee losses. In fact, if an inspector’s repertoire of bee experience does not contain infor-mation of DD, the DD/dwindling or loss would be diagnosed as pesticide-related on the basis of the general signs and symptoms. One inspector commented, “if you haven’t heard of DD, what else fits the situation except pesticides?”

Apiary 1944

Media coverage

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Certainly with both pesticide-re-lated and DD-caused bee losses, the adult population of a colony may be reduced rapidly to a “handful” of bees or, in some cases, the entire population may be lost. However, in the case of pesticide poisoning, there is usually evidence of a pesticide application. (Wilson and Menapace)

And yet, countless publications mention the current iteration as if it were something unprecedented and new. Clear heads have valiantly struggled to bring perspective to the issue of sudden collapse of honey bee colonies. Here is an excerpt from a 2012 ar-ticle published in PLoS ONE:

‘Disappearing diseases’ similar to CCD have long been described in honey bees, and are apparently a re-curring feature of domesticated honey bee populations. Historically, these declines have not shown recognized pathologies and have generally gone unresolved for years following their occurrence.

Colonies of the domesticated honey bee have been in decline in the United States for sixty years. This decline has been driven in part by economic forces, including the increased costs of disease management. Nevertheless, honey bee colony losses in the U.S. have reached new highs in the past several

years, exceeding 30% country-wide during the vulnerable winter period (an absolute rate of 400,000+ colonies each winter in the United States alone).

We have decoupled otherwise weak colonies from those diagnosed with CCD and have shown that the latter colonies have substantially heavier pathogen loads (although whether this increase is a cause or an effect of CCD remains unknown). (Cornman)

Even in this even handed and insightful presentation, the 30% figure reappears and is branded unprecedented (new highs). I have undertaken a close examination of the his-torical losses and have come to the following conclusion: losses have always been in this range but have been reported differently.

Pressure to PollinateThe fact, plainly not understood by the

general public, is that losing colonies of bees is just the way of life for beekeepers. So, why all the fuss about it now? I think the answer lies in one word: almonds. When I started beekeeping in the 1970s, almond pollination was done by California bee-keepers who built their colonies up in win-ter by placing them in the coastal regions of Southern California. As early as January, eucalyptus and a variety of wild and orna-mental plants would be blooming, and the colonies were in good condition by Febru-ary, ready to pollinate. The price was fairly low, so many beekeepers didn’t even bother with pollination. When the acreage planted to almonds skyrocketed, so did the demand for early bees. There simply weren’t enough bees on wheels in California, so the price began to rise in order to attract out of state beekeepers.

The price for bee rental in almonds went from under $60 per hive in 1996, to over $160 by 2006. Quite plainly there is a de-mand for pollinating units in February and beekeepers all over the nation have been try-ing to cash in on it. There is a very strong incentive to have as many rentable colonies as possible. Here’s the rub: many of the colonies are not in proper condition at that time. They are in deep torpor in subfreez-ing temperatures. The colonies can’t really be inspected when the temperatures are that low, so beekeepers take the colonies to California and inspect them there. Then they find out how many they have lost. Prior to this phenomenon, beekeepers had time to inspect and build up their colonies before, say, apple pollination in May. To summa-rize, the high demand for good colonies in February has put pressure on beekeepers to have them available, and many are simply unable to do so.

But aside from the millions of hives needed to pollinate the almond crop, which is mostly exported, what of the other crops that require pollination? Are there enough bees to take care of that? An interesting point that the media reporters all miss (be-cause they are not looking for it) is that fruit production has expanded while the num-

Charting the fall

Bees on the road